The attacks keep coming…
There’s a popular movie from the 1990’s where Bill Murray plays a weatherman who is forced to relive the same day over and over and over again.
If you’re a North Carolina hog farmer, it must feel like Groundhog Day every time you see a story from freelance reporter Barry Yeoman. It’s yet another attack on our farmers, fueled by activists and trial lawyers who want to put us out of business.
This latest attack appeared recently in Indy Week, an alternative weekly newspaper in the Triangle. It purports to tell the story of a Wilson County man who has experienced “20 years of hell” because he lives near a hog farm. (His home is more than a half mile away from the nearest farm.)
It’s no surprise to learn that the story focuses on one of the plaintiffs in the ongoing series of nuisance lawsuits. And like the other plaintiffs in these lawsuits, this particular individual isn’t seeking any changes to the farm’s operations. These plaintiffs and the trial lawyers who represent them only want money.
And like most of the other plaintiffs, there’s no record of neighbor complaints about the farm’s operations — until the trial lawyers showed up with promises of lucrative payouts.
You see, this case isn’t really about 20 years of hell. It’s about the unfettered greed of trial lawyers who have set their sights on North Carolina farmers and the corporations who are vital to the success of our pork industry.
These nuisance lawsuits have been another Groundhog Day experience for our farmers. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit will finally hear oral arguments involving Murphy-Brown’s appeal of the nuisance lawsuit verdicts on Friday, January 31. This is the opportunity we’ve been waiting for — the opportunity to point out serious errors by the judge that unduly influenced the outcome of the trials. We’ll share updates from the Fourth Circuit after the hearing.